


Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched

by CopperBeech



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Apparently Crowley can be a walking anxiety attack and a little shit in the same fic, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is a Little Shit, Depression, Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), Domestic Fluff, Don't copy to another site, First Kiss, Flying, Frottage, Hellfire, Holy Water, Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, It's just hard sometimes, M/M, Mild Smut, Not the way Aziraphale hoped, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Semi-Public Sex, Sexual Tension, Sickfic, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), The Bentley Ships It (Good Omens), They're both pants at communicating, Walking Anxiety Attack Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23032705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: Armageddon’s been averted. Hell and Heaven both know to leave them alone. They’ve toasted the world. It’s finally safe to share their feelings about each other, if they dare.Everything’s going to be fine, right?The thing about the fire is that it burns you, but you don’t burn. No, you remain what you were: whole, unmarked (except for the soot, the blackening of what were once radiant wings), able to feel every scorch and sear nerve-deep, until the pain blots itself out for a time, only to come back redoubled. The sulphur smell gags you, even if you don’t need to breathe. For a while it seems as if you’ll never be rid of it, even after you find your way to solid ground.That’s when you find the fire’s become part of you, that it can burn out of your body, no less painfully. You can send it flaring against the night sky in defiance, sign your name across this Fallen world, but it scalds you every time, sucks you back into that pit,where the worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched.You learn to bury it deep away inside you, to use it only when Hell demands it. It seals your acceptance of your order:Get up there and make some trouble.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 223
Kudos: 286
Collections: Hurt Omens





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The thing that lives in my head said: "Write these scenes." I said, "That's not really a story, what you're giving me," and the thing that lives in my head said, "Write it or I won't send you anything else until you do."
> 
> Don't you hate it when that happens?
> 
> The latent cause, I think, was a Tumblr photoset pointing up how painful and frightening virtually all Crowley's interactions with Hell in the TV series are, to the point that even the Hellfire he can produce from his own body hurts him. Which led to some thoughts about that ultimate, defiant face-down in Heaven, surrounded by the imported fire and blowing out an extra gush, for the bravado. That had to've hurt.

“Do you know, difficult as it was, we ought to try it again sometime – I should l _ove_ to see _you_ handle some of my more annoying customers, and – Crowley? _Crowley?”_

They probably shouldn’t have had that last bottle. They’ve both been good for a lot more in the past, but then again, they’ve never before stormed Heaven nor harrowed Hell. It was a celebration, they’d saved _everything,_ limits seemed absurd, but even the angel’s cast-iron head is swimming a little, and Crowley… Aziraphale doubles back just as he slewfoots and almost goes down on the pavement. Feeling Crowley’s long weight slump against his shoulder tells him more than his own giddiness that it’s past time to get home and sober up.

“Bugger,” mutters the demon close to his ear. “Long fucking day, angel. Didn’t sleep last night either. Catchin’ up with me, ‘s’all.” He feels like a furnace close up. “Gimme a second."

It’s quite a bit more than a second. “I think we can stretch to a cab after warding off Armageddon, don’t you?” says the angel. “You did take quite a crack on the head, even if I was, ah, in residence at the time. Come on.” He propels the protesting demon to the kerb, looks out over the traffic, waves.

“Might be time for one’ve the long ones,” mumbles Crowley, barely audible. The angel’s heart sinks a little – he knows that could mean Crowley being incommunicado for days, weeks, he doesn’t dare think of how long he’s slept at times – but he says only “I’ll walk from yours, it’ll clear my head,” as one of the newfangled electric-powered taxicabs pulls over.

He starts to give the cabman Crowley’s Mayfair address, but the demon clamps a hand on his shoulder.

“Bookshop.”

“All right, dear. As you wish.”

Crowley’s still gripping his shoulder as they pull out into traffic.

* * *

He only relents when Aziraphale needs to reach his pocket to pay for the ride, even though in the interval his head’s sagged back against the seat and he looks half asleep already. Rallies long enough to spider his way up the steps, fall into more than sit down on the old horsehair couch where he’s emptied so many glasses, talked away so many nights. He sprawls; once he’s managed to sober himself, Aziraphale nudges over a faded needlepoint hassock and lifts Crowley’s booted feet onto it.

As aware as he is of the demon’s fondness for sleeping, he hasn’t actually ever seen him do it. The previous night they hadn’t had a second to spare – coaching each other in the hierarchies of Heaven and Hell, the names, the titles, what not to be surprised by. He’s already forgetting, only oddments of their catechism sticking with him (he still wonders why anyone would _think_ of licking those walls).

“Is there – anything I can get you?” he asks. ”Coffee? I haven’t a clue how to make it right but there’s a place at the corner – “

“Pro’l’ly just sick it up, angel. Stay here, ‘s’ all I need. Comfy.” Crowley pats the squashy cushioned sofa back, and only after several seconds does Aziraphale realize he’s being told _Here beside me._

They’ve never sat that way. Crowley gets the sofa for the gymnastic routine that he passes off as sitting. Aziraphale gets the chair. That’s how they do it. Tentatively he sits, back stiff and vertical as a corseted Prussian officer’s.

“ ‘ll just – catch a few winks. Nicer here. Nnnff.” He’s almost inaudible. Aziraphale thinks he understands, now that he’s seen the flat; both of their dwellings are museums, but Crowley’s is cold, echoing, scarcely seems like a place that someone lives. The carpets and chair arms here are buffed and worn, bear the signatures of long years of footsteps and handling. As much as Crowley’s the sleeper and Aziraphale the keeper of an endless vigil, the shop breathes out the slumber of centuries.

Crowley subsides presently, head dropping to one side. It isn’t what anyone would call a peaceful sleep, but then the angel’s whole experience of sleeping is pretty limited. This involves muttering and an occasional unintelligible half-shout, and once a hand flung up as if to ward something off.

After a while, almost creaking from sitting motionless, the angel rises quietly; manages to shift Crowley’s whole length onto the couch. Fingers dig into his wrist, but Crowley doesn’t open his eyes. He pries his hand loose, lifts the sunglasses away; gets a book, goes to sit at his desk, starts the gramophone quietly.

The sky goes a marine blue, then black, then pale again, the short English summer night passing over them like a moving shadow. Crowley holds converse with the invisible, turns and twists beneath the crocheted blanket that Aziraphale eventually throws over him, but doesn’t wake.

* * *

_The thing about the fire is that it burns you, but you don’t burn. No, you remain what you were: whole, unmarked (except for the soot, the blackening of what were once radiant wings), able to feel every scorch and sear nerve-deep, until the pain blots itself out for a time, only to come back redoubled. The sulphur smell gags you, even if you don’t need to breathe. For a while it seems as if you’ll never be rid of it, even after you find your way to solid ground._

_That’s when you find the fire’s become part of you, that it can burn out of your body, no less painfully. You can send it flaring against the night sky in defiance, sign your name across this Fallen world, but it scalds you every time, sucks you back into that pit,_ where the worm dieth not and their fire is not quenched _. You learn to bury it deep away inside you, to use it only when Hell demands it. It seals your acceptance of your order:_ Get up there and make some trouble.

* * *

By ten the next morning he’s started to worry. Normally he’d be opening up, but he’s always been a bit creative about his schedule and he’s earned a few days of freedom from the pretence of selling anything. It’s just that Crowley’s shown no sign of waking after – what – fourteen hours? Finally he pockets the reading glasses – he’s just read the same sentence three times over without retaining it, anyway – and kneels to administer a little shake. Crowley sits sharply upright, those yellow quartz eyes wide and unseeing for a moment, before squeezing them shut tight against the intense sunbeam.

“Crowley. Are you all right? We ought to get you home.”

A sharp shake of the head. “Time?”

“A bit after ten.”

“Sorry, angel.”

“It’s quite all right… only I’m sure you’d be more comfortable…” Another headshake.

“Nah. Know you…” what he knows isn’t clear, because his head’s already lolling to one side again, and when his cheek falls against Aziraphale’s hand he can tell it _is_ faintly slick and fever-heated.

Well, there’s nothing else for it. “Up you come,” sighs the angel, and embarks on the daunting project of getting the half-conscious demon up the spiral stairs to his flat. He can’t quite remember the last time the bed was clear of anything but the bedclothes.

“Ducks,” says Crowley firmly as they reach the landing, as if he’s just remembered something important. It feels as if he’s got six arms and four legs, all stumbling and catching against the overflow of volumes stacked outside the door.

“See, ‘f Ligur’d been a duck, would’ve rolled right off him.”

Aziraphale had taken charge of mopping up the puddle. Housekeeping’s not his strong suit, but he’d been thorough about that one.

“ _Secrets Of The Holy Bookshop,”_ declaims Crowley with audible capital letters as they work their way through a maze of mathoms to what was a bedroom at some past era. Aziraphale keeps the dressing-table and the wardrobe tidy; the rest is shambolic. He slides Crowley off onto the barely available edge of the bed, and the demon continues the slide to the floor, all angles and unforgiving planes. Head back against the counterpane, he goes on rambling as Aziraphale hunts for places to move the stacks of books, the litter of outdated catalogues.

“See, didn’t tell you everything they did when they took me up there. Thinkin’ it was you. Dam’ fine job if I say so myself.”

“I expect it was brilliant.”

“Walked me the length. Everyone look what we do to bad angels. Used to throw us down into the fire, now they’re doin’ it in-house. Modern, eh?”

Has this really been there since 1980? Probably.

“Have a last look, they said. The way you turn around and there’s everything? All the cities? Last time I was there y’only saw jungle, ‘member? Or mountains, ’r deserts… Now it’s Hong Kong and Paris and Tokyo and Westminster. 'N all their skies. Showed me all the kingdoms of this world.”

“Let’s get your boots off.”

It’s like wrestling eels. Crowley’s no help.

“Weren’t plannin’ t’be any more fair to you than they were to me, way back. Mocked us. _Sorry y’didn’t get to kiss your boyfriend goodbye._ ”

Aziraphale winces. The second boot comes off.

“ ‘N then showed ’em. Walked through fire. Second time.”

“You took another lap? Impressive, dear.” It’s hard to know how to answer this; keep it light.

“First here in th’shop. Then there. So everywhere. Upstairs, downstairs, onna stairs.” He gestures like Sir Thomas conducting at the Proms.

Aziraphale shifts a last stack of books off the bed, bends to turn the covers down (and surreptitiously shake off the dust), suddenly thuds to the bedside rug in a stunned heap as Crowley yanks him down by the jacket with unexpected strength. The slitted eyes are close to his own, the dimly lit features contorted in a snarl. He’s a prisoner of his lapels.

“See, tell you a sssecret, angel,” says Crowley, in a conspiratorial tone as if someone might actually be eavesdropping. “What they don’t tell you. What _I_ never told you. Once you Fall, it doesn’t burn you, but it burnsss.”

This makes perfect sense.

“Walked through it. Breathed it out. Even smiled while I was doing it. You splashed in the bath. I _burned.”_

His breath feels hot, actually smells of burning. Aziraphale pries at the fingers gouging into his favorite jacket, feeling Crowley slump.

“Still burnsss.” These last two words are softer, and sound as if they’ve caught at several places in Crowley’s throat on their way out, rising in pitch like a question.

His shirt rucks out of his trousers as the angel tugs the jacket off. Thinks he ought to be more undressed, those clothes can’t be comfortable, but no, it’s enough that Aziraphale’s wrestling him up into the bed – something he’d not imagined like this, never like _this_. Crowley doesn’t seem to know any more quite where he is or what’s happening, looks up as if something important’s just occurred to him, around him, _I don’t know this place,_ utters under his breath: _nononoononono,_ the angel’s easing him back, scooping the pillows under him; Aziraphale stands to pull up the coverlet, and the grip on his wrist is like having it slammed in a door.

“Nonononono,” repeats Crowley, “don’t leave me, don’t send me away again,” and he doesn’t seem to be talking to Aziraphale any longer, but who else is there? The other hand clamps onto him. “Did You know what it was going to feel like when You threw me down there?”

He’s talking to Her. Well, Aziraphale’s only a low-ranking Principality, but he’ll have to do.

“I don’t think any of us knew, dear. Sleep, if it’ll help.”

“Don’t leave me again. I don’t want to Fall again. Stay.” The words come out in a garbled rush, and the demon tugs haphazardly at him, hands landing any old where; fingers digging in at Aziraphale’s first reflexive pull away.

There’s no help for it; the angel, who barely ever touches anyone – whose blessings have always been conferred from an ethereal distance; odd, old-fashioned Mr. Fell, whose comforts come at the end of a fork, or from the horn of a gramophone or the glass in his hand or the book in his lap (nothing else in his lap, ever in his lap) - works off one shoe and then another, struggles awkwardly out of his jacket (Crowley’s still clinging to his hand, which makes it difficult). Slides down, letting the long arms grapple their way around him. There’s a long exhale against his waistcoat: relief, or exhaustion.

He tries to resist the drifting sensation – _this is Crowley, finally in your arms –_ but he’s stupid with fatigue, despite his fear of what his body might do, what he might say. _Not like this, never like this._ The forehead against his chest is hot as a hearthstone, even through clothing. The pillow smells of dust and cradles him like a smaller octave of the shop itself. _Perhaps they thought Falling would only feel like this,_ he thinks vaguely as the world drops away for a while.

* * *

The scream pulls him out of a depth of sleep he’d never imagined reaching, and for a moment he’s got no idea where he is on the Earth or in which of its long ages, nor why anyone would be shouting his name. “ _Where the Heaven are you, you idiot?”_

Gabriel? _Idiot’s_ always seemed to be just behind his lips – what’s he doing in a bed – ? No, Gabriel wouldn’t say –

“ _God – Satan – Someone – where are you?”_

The room comes into focus, Crowley pushing up from the wrecked bed on hands and knees, yellow eyes just visible in the city-lit dimness, unseeing, calling for him.

“I’m here, Crowley. I’m right here.”

This time his own name, howled into his ear, physically hurts. If it doesn’t wake the neighbours, it’s only because the neighbours are either closed shops or clubs where you can shout that loud and still not be heard anyway. He manages to get Crowley by the arms at last, it’s more frightening than defying Heaven itself to lay hands on him this way, but it does something. The taut muscles slacken, though the gaze doesn’t come into focus. “Afraid you were in the fire, angel,” he barely hears. “Afraid it got you, too.”

He rolls back onto the pillows when the angel coaxes him, not resisting. Aziraphale waits until Crowley’s breathing sounds more or less even, then treads softly to the stair, letters a sign to hang on the shop door: _Family Emergency. Closed Until Further Notice._

_* * *_

By the next evening, though the demon doesn’t wake, his sleep is briefly quieter, and the angel risks a longer break from the bedroom than he’s allowed himself all day – as the hours tick by, he brings in cocoa, a chair, a small stack of books, a bottle of Garnacha that’s been laid up just long enough. He finds a featherbed when Crowley goes into a short bout of chills, pulls it back when they break with a bloom of perspiration.

Whatever’s happening, they’re going to have to just ride it out. He’s always found the idea of ordering in takeaway a bit vulgar, but the moment seems made for it; it feels vaguely decadent to receive the waxed cartons at the bookshop door. He feels cold himself despite the season, and a curry does put warmth in you; just the aroma lifts his spirits, and they buoy more when he hears Crowley’s animated voice upon re-entering the flat.

He’s sitting up in the bed and the position of his hand suggests holding a wineglass. He’s seen that earnest, slightly spiflicated expression in the saffron eyes so many times, Crowley with a chocks-away level of blood alcohol explaining everything that occurs to him.

“See, there’s so much I never told you. You’d’ve just hated knowing. It’s cold down there, bloody limestone cave with office lighting, and you look for anything that gives out heat, but bang. Y’get the fire. Was so glad you got rid of that sword, y’know? Industrial era, best thing ever happened, baseboard heat. Mod cons. Miss Rome. The hypocausts. Why en’t anyone doing hypocausts?”

His heart sinks. Crowley’s talking to him, all right, but the unseeing gaze says that it’s some imagined version of him that’s being treated to a confession never made in the actual past.

The demon shifts to his side, as if in sense-memory of a Roman couch. “‘N’see, here’s where it gets devilish. Joke, right? Anything reminds us of Her – what Her love felt like, nope, no more’ve that, old Crawly, y’r cut off, chucked out’ve the club” (an expansive swing of the arm at that, like a drunken cricket bowl) – ”fire burns that much worse. F’rinstance. Y’meet an angel.” He punches a forefinger into the mattress for emphasis. “Big old fluffy Celestial meringue, wouldn’t that just be _ethereal,_ go down good after a bite of apple? – well, better never think about _that_ when you need to touch the fire. _Whooosh.”_ He flails back against the pillows again, subsides.

Aziraphale contemplates Crowley barrelling through the Hellfire of the M25, blazing down the motorway engulfed in it, keeping the flaming Bentley together with one fixed thought: _Wherever you are, I’ll come to you._

The fiery curry isn’t quite as good as he’d hoped.

* * *

He’s known for centuries how long Crowley could sleep, but he’s always imagined it as a childish sulk, or a long, tranquil, Dornroschen slumber, not this rosary of feverish nightmares. By the third day Crowley’s pungent with fear-sweat, his hair lank with it, elflocked from his turning and thrashing. Aziraphale rifles the dressing table for a comb and sees to it, but the demon doesn’t come close to waking, and Aziraphale makes sure that no sound emerges when his lips form the words: _Please, please, my love, come back to me._ It only occurs to him later that he’s never called Crowley that, even inside his own head.

Crowley addresses phantoms as the afternoon wears on.

“Angel, just give me a _chance._ Tried to show you. Didn’t wanna tell you. Y’d think I was lying. Forked tongue. Does weird things, gets away from me.”

He tosses Agnes Nutter’s book in pantomime, calling out to Book Girl; exhorts Adam on the importance of defying your Creator, _‘s’worked out fine for me,_ with a cynical spit in his tone. Once or twice it seems the nightmares, or whatever they are, have passed into quiet sleep again, but:

“Leave him alone, he can’t take it, not like me, already been damned for eternity, what’s a little more? Come on, come at me. Come _ooooonnnn…”_ It’s not clear who he’s shouting at, hiking up in the bed to gesture with both arms, _bring it on._ “Anyone wants to hurt the angel is gonna have to get past _me_ – “ That was Shadwell, wasn’t it? Just before the airfield began to tilt and heave – Crowley’s down again too, as he was then, waiting for the anger of Satan, forehead on his closed fists.

The room’s close with that ripe scent of terror, and Crowley’s shirt is damp when the angel turns him back against the pillow. This really won’t do. He can manage the bedlinens, but using angelic miracles to cleanse a demon‘s body, not just his clothes, seems…. well, risky.

The bath in this old flat hasn’t changed for a century, Aziraphale prefers the Turkish steamroom a few streets away if he wants heat and comfort, but making sure the old plumbing behaves is the first serious miracle of his new freedom. He imagines Gabriel, and makes a rude gesture, which feels so good that he makes it a second time once he’s hung up his jacket and rolled his sleeves. It gives him courage for the next bit.

“Crowley, let’s get this shirt off you – you’ve soaked it through – easy now – “

One sleeve on, one off, Crowley backs away in alarm. Holds up his hands in a warding gesture.

“I’m not going to hurt you. It’s me, Crowley.”

“Don’t wanna hurt _you. He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith.”_

“You won’t.” He hopes. The demon might have a good roundhouse in him. “Do you know where you are?”

“ _Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.”_ The yellow eyes widen in what almost suggests ironic delight.

The threadbare old tartan dressing gown goes around the shirtless shoulders, and _take that, Gabriel,_ his second rogue miracle in ten minutes gets the demon out of his trousers. He’s more slewfoot than he was coming up the stairs, flops over Aziraphale like a wet jacket, but seems to have some idea of what he’s doing, if not who’s with him, when he fetches up against the edge of the tub.

“You an Archangel? Knew we’d end up here.”

“Let’s get your leg up over this, dear.”

“So you done with me now? Going to just dunk me in the water, _fffsssss,_ g‘bye?”

“It’s not the slightest bit holy. Just some lavender salts from Molton Brown’s.”

He tries to look anywhere that isn’t below Crowley’s neck; he’s lived through aeons and eras, seen everything from orgies to carnage, the human corporation in every condition, but this is… different. He scrubs the flannel over what he dares touch, scoops water over the lank russet hair, soaps it with clumsy fingers. The demon chuckles unexpectedly.

“Get your leg up over this, eh?”

Long, dripping arms twine up around the angel’s neck, pull him downward.

“ _Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity_.” He’s not prepared for those lips, still a little too dry and hot to be right, pressing into his, the tongue shocking his mouth open before he can think.

There’s an epiphany in his trousers. Unbidden images ambush his senses: Crowley bracing him against the edge of this tub from behind; Crowley with closed eyes, abandoned to sensation (what would he look like, in that last moment before the cusp?); Crowley laid out on that bed like a feast.

 _Don’t let this happen, not this way._ He pries at the hands laced together at his neck, but Crowley’s disturbingly strong considering the state he’s in. Which… well, the state he’s in is another problem.

“You’re ill, dear. It would be wrong of me.”

“Make me better then.” Crowley lets him go, but tugs his hand under the water.

“That’s what I’m doing… here, rinse you off…”

The grip falters. He isn’t sure whether to feel grateful or bereft when Crowley subsides, lets himself be towelled and walked back to bed. He snatches at the angel’s hand again as Aziraphale pulls up the miraculously clean coverlet ( _hat trick, Gabriel),_ and Aziraphale’s afraid he’ll have to pry himself loose a second time, afraid he won’t (the rebellious flesh is still seeing visions and dreaming dreams), but that’s all Crowley seeks, and he sleeps peacefully.

* * *

“Mmph. ‘M’back, angel.”

He looks a little limp and exhausted, but he’s in focus.

It’s clearly not escaping Crowley’s notice, as he hikes up on his elbows, that there’s nothing between him and the sheets, which are tartan flannel. Or that Aziraphale’s sat companionably on the bed next to him, exhaling a confectionary haze of cocoa.

It’s not escaping Aziraphale that the yellow eyes are flicking back and forth to take this in, and that wheels seem to be turning.

“Hope I didn’t throw you out of bed.”

“I never use it. And you seemed to need it. You quite folded up on me.”

Crowley flops back onto the pillow, arm over his eyes. “Happened before a few times. Enough Hellfire does that. Worse’n dreaming on opium.”

“You said something when you were – I’d assumed demons more or less – didn’t feel it, I suppose…”

“News flash, angel. Wasn’t meant to work that way. Damnation _hurts,_ in case you were wondering.”

“I’m sorry.” It seems obvious once you think about it, and it’s a little mortifying that in six thousand years, he hasn’t.

“Shouldn’t’ve let you see it. Skipped the Ritz, gone back to Mayfair... Just didn’t want to… “ _Leave you_ hangs in the air between them. “Could feel it comin’ on last night.”

“Four nights ago, actually. You don’t remember anything?”

 _“Four?_ Oh, bollocks…” He registers that the angel’s looking at him a bit… oddly. “I… Did I do something I need to apologize for?”

Aziraphale sets down the cocoa mug and rolls onto one elbow. “No, my dear. You didn’t. No apologies needed. Unless…”

He lifts a hand to Crowley’s cheek, fingertips not quite touching; the yellow eyes don’t leave his. “Unless _I_ need to apologize for doing this.”

The kiss is meant to be gentle, undemanding, but Crowley half jumps back – then, after a moment, opens into it with the same softness. Brushes the corner of his mouth, sips first his lower lip, then the upper, breaks away to lean their foreheads together.

“Yeah.”

Fingers mesh with the same delicacy. He’s there at last, so pale and beautiful that Aziraphale’s heart skips a beat, but “Just – very tired right now, angel.”

“It’s all right, my love. We have all the time in the world."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like, share, reblog, comment! 
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @copperplatebeech


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley doesn't want to leave his angel's side. He kisses him in passing, countless times every day. Wants him in the bed whenever he's there.
> 
> And it's Hell.
> 
> _“I’ve reserved a table, Crowley. Don’t make me cancel it.”_
> 
> _The demon’s expression is vaguely hunted. He’s cleaning the blessed window that the plant’s sat in. Studiously ignoring the plant._
> 
> _“We’ll be together. We’ll have each other’s backs.”_
> 
> _(He’s talking about the Ritz. This is difficult to believe.)_
> 
> _“And I’ve developed the most frightful hankering for the chocolate souffle. It’s all that cocoa you fix for me.”_
> 
> _Crowley manages a watery smile. “All right, angel.” He steps over to deposit another soft kiss._
> 
> _The angel feels the glancing contact long after it breaks, like a scorch mark._

The last thing Aziraphale ever imagined was that having Crowley settle in – become a fixture of the bookshop, to be found at any hour draped over this couch or that chair, sunk in a book, or puttering in the flat – would be _disturbing._

But it is. He hasn’t been back to Mayfair, hasn’t so much as put his head out the door. It’s been a week since the Ritz. Eight days since Adam remade the world.

“Get a bit of lunch maybe. Go to the park.”

“Don’t need to eat really, do we? And no more secrets to keep anymore, let someone else fatten up the ducks. ‘M fine here.”

“That lovely little Peruvian place in Dean Street.”

“Just not in the mood.” He softens it by lifting his head for a kiss.

He does that a lot. A kiss in passing, a touch of the hand, sighing into Aziraphale’s arms if the angel joins him in the tartan bed (where he can be found at random hours of day or night, and which has now been shaken out and fluffed and freed from the clutter around it, as if Crowley’s auditioning for the job of househusband). It’s always a half-asleep sigh, a grateful clasp of the angel’s hands, a deeper burrow into the pillows before receding into the silence of more sleep.

Aziraphale’s lonelier than he remembers being in the centuries when they barely met.

“I’m sure it would pick you up – you could do a few temptations on the way, you must miss it – “

“Off the clock after six thousand fucking years.” Crowley doesn’t look up this time, turns a page as if it’s personally offended him.

“Mind that one. It’s a little fragile.”

Crowley thumps the book down – though not roughly – on the nearest smidgen of clear table space, turns without a word and goes back up the stairs. Aziraphale considers following, reaches for an auction catalogue instead.

Two hours later Crowley comes back down, still without a word. Brushes lips over his hair from behind his reading chair; comes around to spider down to the carpet and lean back against the angel’s outstretched legs, capture the fingers of the hand that’s not holding his wineglass. The gramophone’s purling out Bach.

It’s Aziraphale’s dream, and it’s all he can do not to cry.

* * *

“Oughtn’t you to stop in at your flat for a bit? – Mail, you know, see how the plants are doing…?”

“S’pose you'd like me to bugger off then? Been here long enough…” He doesn’t, however, move from the loveseat he’s currently engulfing, or look up from the alchemy text he’s been half reading all morning.

“Dear, there’s nothing I want less than for you to, ah, _bugger off_. Only I know you make so much of the plants –. I remember how stunned I was when I saw them. I thought you’d just want a look in. Maybe dinner after.”

There’s a moment when it seems as if the idea’s taken hold, then: “Nah,” says Crowley. “I’ll just stay here if it’s all the same to you. Feel a nap coming on.”

He’s only been up two hours. _Try not to sound vexed._ “Well, I’ve _got_ to get out for a bit. Pick up something for later. I could stop in and see that they’re watered – only I don’t suppose I could manage the wards – “

“Ah, they never were set to keep you out. Didn’t I tell you?”

 _No, you didn’t._ “I – all right then. Bit of air, lovely day… sure you don’t want to –?”

“P’raps later.”

He’s pretty sure there won’t be a _later_. Not today.

* * *

The plants, clearly long terrorized into thriving, haven’t browned or withered or shed a leaf (well, one, but he reassures it that he won’t tell Crowley). He mists them anyway, wanders from room to room for no other reason than that it’s not the bookshop – he never imagined he would feel like a prisoner in there; tucks an intact star atlas under his arm, slips one of the flowering plants into his jacket pocket. He emerges into light that’s just a little too hot and intense, and realizes he’s squinting at the sundog reflection off the fender of Crowley’s black Bentley, ensconced in a no-parking zone, serenely immune to citations and clamps.

At his touch, the door startles him by clicking open. He slides in behind the wheel, smelling leather and exhilaration. Lays a hand on the dash.

“I know you miss him,” he finds himself saying. “I do too.”

The disc player chunks and whirs, and Freddie Mercury’s voice fills the compartment: _Fire burnin' in hell with the cry of screaming pain/_ _Son of heaven set me free and let me go/ Someone has drained the colour from my wings…_

“Something like that, dear. I’m sure he’ll come back to himself, but it’s been a difficult week or two. Well, no one would know better than you. You’ve been so loyal.”

The switch to a heavy bass beat jolts him. _Bebop_ isn’t the best method of communication, but it’s what they’ve got.

 _Liar liar they never let you win / Liar liar everything you do is sin/_ _Liar nobody believes you / Liar they bring you down before you begin…_

“Yes. I’ve never truly realized how it’s been for him.”

_Oh my love, don’t hurt me this way / Don’t make me wait too long or I’ll lose my mind…_

“I feel a bit the same, dear,” he says. “I’ll do my best.”

He takes a turn through Golden Square on the way home, just because he can; stops into a bakery here and a wineshop there, makes an outing of it. The sun drops.

* * *

“Oh, thank _Someone_ you’re all right.”

“ _Crowley?_ You startled me out of my skin – ”

At least something’s gotten him out of the shop. To dash as far as the end of the block, anyway. He’s clamped onto the angel, heaving shaky exhalations of relief, as if he’s just pulled him from a burning building, instead of intercepting him at the corner in front of the adult video store.

“Sorry. I – “

“Why shouldn’t I be all right?”

“You were gone so long, I got to thinking – what if they suss out how we did it? Come for us? For you?”

“ _Do_ let go, dear – we’re making a bit of a scene – I’m going to drop this – “

“I shouldn’t have let you go out like that.”

“Crowley, it’s not your choice whether I go or don’t go anywhere – “ He’s beginning to chafe at this, and tries to walk back the exasperation creeping into his voice.

“Don’t you see, they could still get to us, and if I lose you again then what? No recorporation – it’s safer in the shop, I know how strong your wards are – “

“Carry this?” Aziraphale interrupts. It’s pointless to let him go on, working into a shriller pitch, attracting attention, _here we are on a Soho pavement, two old queens having a public quarrel._

Crowley doesn’t even glance at the book pressed into his hands, doesn’t seem to care what it is. He says nothing when the angel sets the plant in the moted light of the east-facing window.

* * *

He’s always been the clever one, the resourceful one, the one who showed up in the nick of time, who always turned out to be right after all the arguments had been exhausted (even unto the End Of The World, which he was right about preventing). He’s been more _courage_ than Aziraphale could imagine walking on two legs (and he’d known Alexander), and here he is hiding from the world in a bookshop.

Possibly the most painful thing is the way they seem, time and again, about to make love. But don’t.

They’re lovers, finally – after all this time, all the crossed signals and repudiations – if lovers are people who touch tenderly every time they pass, exchange random kindnesses (Crowley’s learned how to make cocoa the way he likes it, and he’ll find it miraculously at just the right temperature, on the nightstand or on his desk when he comes down to open in the mornings). If lovers are people who share their space, clothing (Crowley’s taken to sleeping in the tartan dressing gown, which almost wraps around him twice), a bed.

Crowley knows the angel doesn’t sleep for choice, but he wants him there – holding him as he drifts off, in reach when he wakes. He’s always swaddled tight in the ratty flannel, the lines and angles of his sinfully perfect corporation outlined in incongruous plaid, and Aziraphale _wants_ him, wants to peel that wrapping away by slow stages and kiss every bit as it’s revealed; discover his hollows and angles, brush his face against the textures of skin and hair. His throat’s thick with it when Crowley subsides into sleep, always meshing fingers in a soft but unyielding clasp; when he wakes with a chaste kiss, _good morning, angel,_ turning away to knuckle his eyesockets, never accepting the invitation to linger, make it into something more. It’s worse than the centuries when he took mortal lovers, giving them every pleasure, asking nothing but to imagine Crowley from behind his closed eyes as he drew out the sounds of delight and release.

He suspects that Crowley did something similar. But now they share a bed like novices in a nunnery, and he thinks of that broad, sly grin, those fevered eyes, _get your leg over this, eh?,_ and desire becomes a bodily ache. Sometimes he wishes he’d given in at that moment, and hates himself for it; sometimes he’s furious with Crowley for tantalizing him with that forbidden fruit at all, and hates himself for that too.

There’s a morning when he realizes he’s slept again – it’s something they can share, he’ll settle – and finds they’ve moved in the night, he’s pressed against the long bony spine, arm over Crowley in just the right position that his fingertips graze the heat and heaviness of sleepy arousal –– what he thinks a few loving strokes could turn into something quite splendid indeed. He slides his hand into the dressing gown, samples the velveteen texture – is he being a bit ridiculous thinking of the soft nap of his old waistcoat? Probably – Crowley’s hand covers his –

Nudges it away, to rest against the spare belly. Twines fingers lovingly in his, but the message is clear: not that, not today.

 _All right, darling, as long as you need,_ he thinks.

His body thinks something else: reminds him of a time when he was sure he saw Crowley looking at him hungrily, when he’d asked _what are you in the mood for now?_ and dared for a moment to imagine. Maybe his body knows better than he does. As long as Crowley needs, yes, however long that is, but at least it might bring him back to himself.

The miracle’s the easy part.

* * *

“I’ve reserved a table, Crowley. Don’t make me cancel it.”

The demon’s expression is vaguely hunted. He’s cleaning the blessed _window_ that the plant’s sat in. Studiously ignoring the plant.

“We’ll be together. We’ll have each other’s backs.”

(He’s talking about the Ritz. This is difficult to believe.)

“And I’ve developed the most frightful hankering for the chocolate souffle. It’s all that cocoa you fix for me.”

Crowley manages a watery smile. “All right, angel.” He steps over to deposit another soft kiss.

The angel feels the glancing contact long after it breaks, like a scorch mark.

* * *

“Thank you, Fereydoon. It’s good to see you again.”

It is and it isn’t. Things are already going wrong: the black pools of Crowley’s lenses are focused on the candle that the maitre’d’s lighting in the centre of the table, and he’s suppressing a shaky, alarmed inbreath. Aziraphale reaches for his hand under the tablecloth; pinches the wick out as Fereydoon retreats, winces at a painfully tightened grip.

“Don’t take chances like that, angel.”

“It’s just an ordinary candle.”

Slow exhale. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Crowley’s nudged his chair around so that he can scan as much of the dining room as possible, and his eyes flick up and over their surroundings every few minutes; he’s only pretending to look at the menu. Aziraphale orders for them both, something light because he’s pretty sure he’ll be the only one eating anyway. The wine arrives, and Crowley downs half his glass, draping himself over the Ritz’s dainty chair with a vaguely mulish expression, what’s visible of it.

“I thought maybe tomorrow you might like to get the Bentley out – she misses you, you know, at least that’s what she seemed to be telling me – “

“Oh, checking in with everyone, are you?”

He’s about accounted for the glass. Aziraphale pours.

“Well – don’t you think a spin through the countryside would be nice? Get out of London, you always do so enjoy it – “

“S’pose,” says the demon in the same tone as _P’raps later._

“Perhaps Tadfield? It seemed a lovely area, and we really didn’t get to see it under very propitious circumstances – “

“Angel, last time I drove that car between here and Tadfield it was _on fucking fire.”_ He speaks a little too loudly and draws a stinkeye from an American woman at the nearest table, who’s clearly wealthy, “doing ” London in style, and cementing an opinion about the reputed sweariness of the British.

“Well… wherever suits you, Crowley. I quite like a bit of a spin with you, you know.”

“Would that be the part where you turn white as Gabriel’s teeth or the part where you shout about me getting us both killed?” The food arrives, Crowley ignores it in favor of the wine, orders another bottle. He’s startling subtly at every scrape of a chair or huff of a candlelighter.

“Maybe I should change my name again,” he says presently, almost too softly for Aziraphale to hear.

“Why ever, my dear?”

“To remind you,” says Crowley. “Because you’re trying to make me be someone I’m not right now. Waitin’ for me to swoop in and put some danger in your life. Thought you’d’ve had a belly full of that.”

The Norfolk crab is absolutely flavourless. It’s probably nothing to do with the kitchen.

“So – what do we talk about? Jobs we’re gonna pass off to one another? Latest politics?”

The wine makes it possible to at least swallow.

“Or just about how I've melted down on you and need to shape up? I’ll try to do better.”

“Crowley, looking after you was a privilege – “

“Been through it before. Just not that bad. Could’ve spared you.”

“We’ve both been through a lot – “

“And there you are. Making love to the Ritz menu like nothing happened.” The arch lift of the eyebrow; that, at least, is the Crowley he knows. “Oughta tell me your secret.”

“What I _make love_ to is perhaps not a conversation we should have here – “ He’s sorry as soon as it leaves his lips, because that hungry look, like a fascinated cat’s, has crept into Crowley’s features. Things are rapidly ceasing to make any kind of sense. A trolley jostles by, the waiter clinking dishes daintily at the table behind him with the Ritz’s characteristic finesse. There’s a hissing whoosh of ignition; someone’s ordered the flambeed apple tart, normally a delightful pyrotechnic display, and Crowley’s fingers dig into the tablecloth. He’s breathing shallowly again, kicking back from the table just as the angel reaches toward one spider-leg hand, stalking out of the dining room as quickly as he can without breaking into an undignified run.

Aziraphale waves to the waiter.

* * *

“Fereydoon was quite concerned. I told him you’d been ill. He sends his best.”

Crowley’s got one hand on a lamp standard, the other over his face.

“You could just come right out and say I made a tit’ve myself. That’s what you’re thinking, right?” There doesn’t seem to be any helpful answer to this. “Caught me by surprise. And every third person I see looks like Hastur. Or Uriel. Someone we don’t want to find us. Can’t handle it just now, sorry.”

“I just thought – the last time I didn’t realize how badly done up you were, now you’d have a chance to enjoy it properly – “

“You don’t just snap back. Not from _that._ Not that fast.” He’s pinching the bridge of his nose, the way you do when you’re trying to throttle back tears, the dark glasses jacked up a little toward his forehead; falls into a fast walk that leaves the shorter angel trotting to catch up.

“I’m sorry you had to go through it, dear – if I’d known –”

“Wouldn’t’ve changed anything. The only way around was through.”

“Still – “

“Been nice if we could’ve skipped it _all,_ wouldn’t it? If _your_ lot hadn’t decided to go into the damnation business in the first place?”

“You said yourself it’s not your side and my side any more, Crowley – it’s _our side_ – “

“Seems to me you’re still a full on member of the Heavenly Host, much’s you know about what other people ought to be doin’ with themselves.”

“That’s unfair, and you know it.”

“Do I?” The demon picks up his pace. “You’ve got the menu set for me. Got the plants all set for me. Know just what I need. D’je ever think I might be looking after _you?_ Way I’ve been how many hundred years, ‘cos you’re a blessed _idiot?_ They’ve started farming the job out to each other, must’ve learned from us, only it’s just two of us and _all_ of them, how long d’you really think they’ll leave us be?”

“Now you’re just jumping at shadows.”

“Am I? Thought I was wrong asking for Holy Water too, didn’t you? And talk of that, you don’t _sweat_ the bloody stuff – but what _if_ we were to – I’m still carrying Hell around right inside me – “ He pauses his stride, so that the angel all but collides with him.

Aziraphale slowly grasps what he’s getting at.

“Do you know why they say demons can’t love?” There’s a shaky catch in the voice now, and his face is turned away. “ ‘Cos that’s another thing that damnation means. If you love anything, that’s when you know you’re going to lose it.”

The silence stretches out.

“Let’s go home,” Aziraphale finally pleads, quietly.

“Yeah. Let’s. You to yours, me to mine.”

Crowley turns on his heel and strides off, fists punched into his jacket pockets, head down, not looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like, share, reblog, comment! 
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @copperplatebeech


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An angel consolidates his blasphemies in solitude.
> 
> _The domed glass skylight reminds him of Heaven. Not in a good way._
> 
> Have a last look, they said. The way you turn around and there’s everything? All the cities? Last time I was there y’only saw jungle, ‘member? Or mountains, ’r deserts… Now it’s Hong Kong and Paris and Tokyo and Westminster. ‘N all their skies. Showed me all the kingdoms of this world…
> 
> _You want to scare me, Gabriel? Uriel? Fine. You did, you know – all those years, I was petrified of you. But I never Fell, never had to burn. Not even when that was what you wanted. He took that one for me, because he could._
> 
> _Take your love and mercy and shove it up._

_In the beginning She created the heaven and the earth._

_And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep._

The click of the door latch, the chimes, the scrape of his feet on the floorboards all sound unnaturally large in the stillness. He hangs up his coat. There doesn’t seem to be any point in turning on a light; darkness inside, darkness without. He ascends the spiral stair, trying to make no sound; sounds are for the living and he’s not sure he’s one of their number right now.

The flat’s a faded photograph, gray shading to black, planes of light from the street crazing all perspective, so that there are only unrecognizable shapes around him: blurs of darkness and deeper darkness. He picks his way through the bedroom, something he couldn’t have done without knocking over a stack of books or stumbling into a box only days ago. Now the room’s a comfortable, tidy little refuge, courtesy of his vanished housedemon, who’s found a middle ground here between Aziraphale’s haphazard pack-ratting and the extruded emptiness of the minimalist flat in Mayfair.

He realizes that, sometime before they left for the Ritz, Crowley must have brought the plant up, set it in a plate from the kitchen on the cleared bedtable. It’s one of the few things clearly recognizable, and only because he’s spent the last few days staring at it. The comb he used, days ago, to put Crowley’s clumped elflocks in order lies beside it; night's bled away the vivid autumn of the tangles of hair caught in the teeth.

He’s still holding it as he stretches out on the fluffed, straightened duvet, feels the softly threadbare flannel dressing-gown lying across the foot of the bed; pulls it up to bunch it under his cheek (it smells of Crowley). Plumps a pillow for something to put his arm over. A few faint, fragmented beams of light from late Soho traffic find their way through the front rooms to travel over the wall.

There’s a clock ticking. He realizes it’s the one in the kitchen. He’s never heard it tick before.

Maybe he’ll try to sleep. Now that he’s no longer revolving around the dark star of Crowley’s hurt and anger, he can feel his own bone-deep weariness, as if some nameless virtue has passed from him. But there’s only a rigid immobility that won’t dissolve into absence, and the shreds of unquiet dreams.

He could go down and open a bottle of wine; set a book on his lap; play quartets on the gramophone. But the only sound he wants is the sound of the shop’s door, and he wants to be able to hear it from here, on the bed, like a single word spoken into the stillness: _angel?_.

The ticking taunts him instead, counting off the seconds from the moment that Crowley turned his back, walked away from him. After an endless number of them the London sky, never truly dark, fades to a paler shade of grey. Perhaps he does sleep then; when his eyes open to a flat re-created out of the shapeless firmament in which he lay down, there’s a memory of walking through the city’s streets, all empty. When he goes into the east-facing sitting-room, the slanting sun blazes through diamond-clear windows. Crowley must have cleaned them, too.

_And She said, Let there be light: and there was light._

_And She called the light Day, and the darkness She called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day._

* * *

_And She made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so._

_And She called the firmament Heaven._

The domed glass skylight reminds him of Heaven. Not in a good way.

_Have a last look, they said. The way you turn around and there’s everything? All the cities? Last time I was there y’only saw jungle, ‘member? Or mountains, ’r deserts… Now it’s Hong Kong and Paris and Tokyo and Westminster. ‘N all their skies. Showed me all the kingdoms of this world…_

You want to scare me, Gabriel? Uriel? Fine. You did, you know – all those years, I was petrified of you. But I never Fell, never had to burn. Not even when that was what you wanted. He took that one for me, because he could.

Take your love and mercy and shove it up.

(Oh, he’s getting reckless since that inaugural _oh fuck,_ that inside-out wrenching moment in the summoning circle. Actually researched a full selection of obscene gestures. The “figs,” a thumb thrust between the first and second fingers, has a classical appeal – there’s Vanni Fucci in Dante’s _Inferno,_ who extends that salute to Her only to be enlaced by serpents, and isn’t _that_ a thought – but the modern _vaffanculo_ , fist raised in an uppercut while the other hand slaps his thick bicep, embodies a more satisfactory defiance. He offers it to the skylight at least once a day.)

Even Holy Water, which began as the water above the firmament, doesn’t seem too damned Holy when he considers they were ready to help Hell souse Crowley in it. _You don’t_ sweat _the bloody stuff – but what_ if _we were to – I’m still carrying Hell around right inside me –_

He reflects on how done he is with Heaven.

He contemplates an experiment.

_And the evening and the morning were the second day._

* * *

_And She said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so._

_And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and She saw that it was good._

The late summer apples are coming in at the Berwick Street Market. He’s found a few things to nibble at one stall and the other – an oily bread laced with olives, seared slices of Halloumi cheese – and now he picks out a single glossy fruit, almost too large to wrap his hand around.

(He’d seen that glistening serpent, coiled in the branches of the Tree: forbiddingly beautiful, as if to touch it would be to violate some sanctity even greater than the holiness of the Tree itself. He’d supposed, at the time, that that was the point, to ward the humans away; when he saw the sleek coils transform into the comely shape of a young man, red-gold hair lifting in the laden breeze atop the Wall, luminous eyes smiling on him, for a moment nothing had mattered to him but holding that gaze. _Lord, truly you are great if you can create a thing so beautiful._ He couldn’t shake the thought, even after he grasped that this was the creature who’d whispered disobedience into the woman’s ear, with that forked tongue that roved out thoughtfully on the thin lips, in that voice that was like the soft touch of the wind.

(He’d already given away the sword. So it was his second heresy in one day. Perhaps it got easier as you went along _._ )

The shop’s empty and echoing when he returns. He finishes the apple in small bites, making it last, until there’s only the coarse, leathery core, the pentagram of smooth, hard seeds arrayed in it. He crushes them between his teeth one by one, tasting the bitter after the sweet.

_And the evening and the morning were the third day._

* * *

_And She said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years._

The streetlamps and garish signs of Soho are fighting their way through a melancholy drizzle. From the second floor, he can imagine he's in the firmament above them, as She was when she ordered the days and seasons.

Until the past week or so, he’s never spent much time in the flat. The shop is the home he’s made for himself, and being in it is like inhabiting the chambers of his own heart (that’s why there’s always been a place for Crowley there). Now it seems important to be in that upstairs space, where he’s held the demon, comforted him, slept through the night beside him. He unplugs one of the bedside lamps, sets it in a window facing the street, to say _I am here, I’m keeping watch for you;_ the cord doesn’t reach, but he lifts his hand and snaps, and it sheds a light like a small sun, a beacon that he imagines can be seen in Mayfair.

No one comes.

 _And the evening and the morning were the fourth day_.

* * *

_And She said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven._

He’s been rambling through St. James’s and Westminster, telling himself that he’s only taking the air – it’s a cruelly beautiful day, just enough breeze to make the sun welcome when its heat pools across the layers of his clothing – but of course he ends up walking along the Mall, watching the skitter of squirrels in St. James’ Park, hearing the piercing honk of waterbirds. Crowley’d spotted a peregrine there once, _did I ever tell you about the time I took up falconry, got me in with the Plantagenets, job there, they said it was miraculous how I spoke to the birds._ And the mischievous expression the angel loved had blossomed on his face as he lifted an arm; the barred, broad-winged creature – like Crowley’s own, angled sharply down from the joint – had swooped down to alight, flexing the saffron-hilted scimitars of its talons into the sleeve of the black jacket. They’d visibly pierced the fabric, and the demon’s soft hiss went through his bones. The obsidian eye seemed to meet his as the bird turned its head to one side, inscrutable as Crowley’s dark lenses. A passerby had gasped and scrabbled for her phone just in time for the bird to explode up again in a thunder of pinions, wheeling away into the sky.

He looks around now, but there are only pigeons, and the ducks, and on the far side of the water the one bullying swan that always comes right up to them.

He looks away from the pond, telling himself he’s only imagining a head of red hair in the middle distance. Walks on. The light’s dropping when he gets back to his door.

_And the evening and the morning were the fifth day._

* * *

_So She created man in Her own image, in the image of God created She them; male and female created She them._

The pair that wanders in almost as soon as he opens up are young, and he doesn’t feel in much danger of their trying to buy books. They’re holding hands as they amble up and down the stacks, speaking softly enough that he can only catch the tone of their happiness: there’s an occasional soft laugh, a quick stolen kiss behind the lexicography shelf. They do not look like people who are very interested in lexicography, but they linger there a while. The flashes of love he senses are laced with melancholy: her father doesn’t approve, his mother thinks she’s a tart. They’re wandering around London mainly to be together. They don’t see a way forward if they can’t bring their families round.

They’re alive to struggle with their little drama because he faced down Heaven, and if what happened in the end costs him Crowley, the world’s still safe.

“Never knew this shop was here,” the young man says to him as they emerge from the stack, not to be rude.

“We’re quite one of London’s best kept secrets,” he says, stands, extends a hand. “A .Z. Fell at your service, do feel free to ask questions.” The girl giggles at the formality, but they each clasp his hand in turn, and through the brief connection he slips in a blessing: peace, and faith in what they have. After everything that’s changed, goes on changing, it’s a pleasant surprise to find he can still do that.

They’re so obviously in love it hurts to look at them.

He tries not to feel Envy, though perhaps it’s time he started ticking off the Seven Deadlies, and instead enjoys the lift in their spirits as his blessing banishes their unease. They’re already both more hopeful by the time they finish their ramble, _will you look at that, I don’t even know what this is but it’s awesome,_ and thank him in a slightly more heartfelt way than you’d expect from a couple of Gen Z-ers who’ve just beguiled a half hour in an antiquarian shop. He glances up, _do come again,_ and looks back down at the catalogue he’s been not seeing for most of the morning. There’s the sound of the door chimes, then the familiar clunk of the latch seating –

– doesn’t happen.

He gazes straight ahead at the catalogue for another daisy-chain of seconds.

When he looks up Crowley’s there – leaning an elbow against the doorjamb, limber, boneless, one ankle crossed in front of the other, as if he’s been slouched there for hours. Some distance beyond him there’s the fender of the Bentley, ensconced serenely in a no-parking zone at the kerb. There’s no reading the falcon eyes behind the glasses.

“Thought it might be time for that picnic we talked about,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Attentive readers will note that this has turned from four chapters into five -- the last a short coda, but it felt right to give it its own space. 
> 
> If you like, share, reblog, comment! Come say hello on Tumblr @copperplatebeech


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've both lost a part of themselves. Sometimes that's not entirely a bad thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The lines of verse at the chapter head are from T. S. Eliot's _Ash Wednesday._

_The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying  
_ _Unbroken wings  
_ _And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices  
_ _In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices  
_ _And the weak spirit quickens to rebel  
_ _For the bent goldenrod and the lost sea smell._

He’s been resting his right hand palm down on his thigh since they crossed the M25, heading southeast on the M3 towards Bournemouth. They’ve just got past Runnymede when Crowley slides his over to cover it, wordlessly.

There’s a hamper in the back seat, and it could be a miraculous production, but the angel strongly suspects Selfridge’s was involved. He’d snatched up a few things himself from the flat – a significant liquid element may be required in this discussion – and the carrier bag flutters noisily on the floorboards in the breeze from the cracked windows. It makes the silence less awkward. For once, the Bentley hasn’t got a note to play.

“Said things I shouldn’t’ve,” Crowley says when the traffic thins out.

*On the contrary. I think I was just making things worse for you.”

“ ‘s’all right, angel. Used to waitin’ for you to get a bloody clue.” There’s a catch in his voice, but the tone is fond. Almost inaudibly: “Start over? Give me time?”

“Dear, we’ve been giving each other time for centuries. I can manage a bit more.”

Their pace is so tame that Aziraphale has to bite his tongue to keep from saying _please don’t hold back on my account._ But the city’s peeling away bit by bit, opening out into the impossibly green quilt of late-summer Sussex. Sheep dot hillsides, even this close in; Crowley cuts away onto an A-road before they can get too close to the inevitable back-up near Stonehenge – “bet no one ever thought that place’d snarl traffic” – and takes things a little quicker, loosening up.

“Thought we’d try a spot I used to like on the coast,” he says. “One’ve the bits the hikers don’t fancy as much. She put lots of dinosaur bones down there, y'know, always gives me a chuckle.” It’s visibly easier for him to talk when he doesn’t have his eyes on Aziraphale, when he’s _watching the road_ as the angel’s squealed at him to do so many times. “Gets windy, but reckon we can manage that. Got a few miracles left in us, don’t we?”

“They don’t seem to have become unavailable. Though I confess I’ve had reason to be concerned. And Gabriel was always so _scathing_ about _frivolous miracles_ _._ _”_

“ _Wanker,”_ mutters Crowley through clenched teeth, then more loudly, “Fucks you up, dunnit, having masters?”

“Yes. Rather.”

“Got to thinking…. That was what I told _them_ all those years ago – _don’t have masters, choose for yourself,_ got this big mess of a world out of it.”

“I’m growing certain that was part of Her plan too _._ ”

“Getting more heretical by the day, angel?”

The Bentley slips through a roundabout as if it’s on smooth tracks, a mandala of choices.

“But _we_ went on serving, funny, ennit? Never had to wonder what to do with myself. Never had to wonder what to do about _us_. Just knew it couldn’t happen. Never expected everything’d change. Or that we’d change it.” He downshifts as a straggle of sheep drifts onto the road. “It’s on all the afternoon talk shows, ennit? Knocks you a bit sideways, bein’ out of a job.”

* * *

The breeze snaps out the picnic blanket as Crowley shakes it open. The Bentley’s back in Lulworth, _not_ parked in the churchyard recommended by the National Trails sign. It’s blustery, and even the most popular stretches of the South Downs bridleway are all but deserted; no one noticed them snap their way to the clifftop when the hamper started to get heavy.

The gale and brutally clear sky have made the sea into a shifting carpet of diamonds, bright enough that Crowley squints and puts his sunglasses back on; turns his hand downward, snaps, encasing them in a tranquil bubble of windless calm. There’s only a narrow thread of beach visible below the base of the sheer cliff a few yards away, fine if you want to walk heel to toe; even if sea-bathers were out on a day like this, it’s easy to imagine this stretch would stay deserted. It’s beautiful, but the angel doesn’t miss the way Crowley still glances in one direction or the other, trying not to be obvious about it; here, you can see anyone coming from a long way off.

They don’t speak until the wine’s opened, the glasses clinked together in a wordless toast.

“I missed you.”

Crowley looks out over the water. The grass ripples beyond their sphere of calm, making it seem as if the ground should be undulating beneath them, the earth reshaping itself. He keeps his face turned seaward when he does speak.

*Went out for about a half hour on Tuesday. Just to pick up a couple bottles. Never felt more like a target. Took it back home and drank it, don’t remember much about the rest of that day. Forgot how hangovers suck.”

“That time in Chaldea. It felt like my head was filling up the room.”

Crowley smiles, remembering. “You tried to dance, and you kept falling down. On me, once.”

It hadn’t been accidental. Aziraphale suspects he knows that. He lays out the pate, the baguette, the little jar of tapenade, the round of shortbread petticoat-tails; Crowley’s consulted his tastes, and he realizes abashedly how long that’s been going on.

“Got out the next day and sat in the Bentley for a while. Just to talk. She sang to me.”

“Yes, she did to me, too.” He doesn’t cite the songs, mostly because he can’t name them, and neither does Crowley.

“Tried the park the day after. Told m'self I had to stay till I ran out of bread. Broke out in a sweat just in time for that bastard of a swan to grab the last of it, all I could think’ve was them packing me into that van, but whaddya know, nothing happened.” The olives are a melange, oily with herbs and lemon, and he’s meditatively licking his fingers; if Crowley eats anything it’s bitter, peppery, smoky. “So I decided to try driving her, made it over far as the shop last night.”

“Why ever didn’t you come in?” Said oh, so lightly _(I was lying on the duvet that smelled of you with my cheek on the tartan gown_ ).

Crowley refreshes their glasses. “Wasn’t sure you’d have me. Hadn't been much good to you, hangin' about.”

Aziraphale holds his gaze, doesn’t drink.

 _“Whom have I in heaven but thee?”_ he says softly, realizing he already loved Crowley when the Psalms were written. _“And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.”_

He can’t really tell if their eyes are meeting. There’s only the black nullity of those convex lenses. After a moment Crowley sets his glass on top of the closed hamper; leans in, hand coming to rest on one morning-coated shoulder, to settle lips – as if they’ve come home to rest, as if he’s weary for safe harbour – against unresisting lips.

It’s not the kiss the angel’s dreamed about, there with his cheek against the flannel ( _make me better, then),_ but it lingers, there’s longing in it, and it _is_ like starting over. Breath mingles, warmth breaches the boundary between them. There’s only a flicker of divided tongue.

“Prol’ly shouldn’t’ve,” says Crowley as they break apart, “You have to understand, I do want you. I’ve never wanted anything else, but…”

*Do you really imagine you could ever hurt me?”

“Told you, till a couple weeks ago, never expected I’d have to think about it. But what happened in Heaven, almost blowtorched Gabriel before I knew I was doing it. Don’t even remember thinking that through. ‘N remembered the time Pope Innocent’s goons caught up with me in Beziers – Albigensian Crusade, you remember – loaded for bear with aspergills, same thing, blistered ’em good – so, y’know, in a moment of _heat –_ “

“Dear, I think we can consider that a defensive reflex. I’ll try not to be threatening.” He touches Crowley’s cheek, feels the demon jump slightly before relaxing into it. “I wish you’d said something sooner.”

“Hated the thought’ve you being – afraid of me. Tryin’ to have it both ways, I s’pose. I was already afraid of making you Fall – ”

“Well, I’ve done what I did and I haven’t Fallen. And – there _is_ something I need to show you.” He looks around for the Marks’n’Sparks carrier bag he brought from the shop. “Have you anything of Hell about you? Other than yourself.”

Crowley shakes his head.

“Well then.” And he lifts his hand, pausing at Crowley’s flinch, going on when there’s a nod of permission; wraps a few strands of the startled demon’s hair around his forefinger, pulls.

“Ouch!” Crowley stifles a swear. “Nice job not being _threatening –_ “

“Forgive me. Stand well back for a moment, if you would.”

Crowley steps away from the blanket, obviously perplexed, as Aziraphale extracts a Thermos from the carrier. “I don’t imagine I can set everything right for you while I’m standing on one foot – “

“Not least ‘cos you’re sitting on a blanket.”

“Clever boots. But on this one point I believe I might put your mind at ease.” He empties his wineglass, drops in the strands of hair; unscrews the Thermos. “I haven’t blessed any water in a while" – they both remember exactly how long it’s been– “but there’s no reason for me to have lost my knack. And we know it stays fresh. Observe a pyrotechnical wonder by the Amazing Mr. Fell.” Crowley jumps back another three feet as he tips the Thermos over the goblet, expecting a blinding, actinic flare, a spray of shards.

Nothing happens.

Crowley’s catching flies. He yanks off the glasses, but the scene’s still the same: an angel wearing the ghost of a smile, holding a wineglass that he extends a short distance beyond the blanket before emptying it onto the turf, rising to his feet.

“Humour me,” he says. “Try the Fire. I know if I’m wrong it’ll – it’ll hurt you, even worse with me here. But I think we need to find out, don’t we?”

Crowley looks down at his hands, slowly brings the palms athwart one another; swipes them sharply, something that, with intention, ought to bring a gout of sulphurous flame bursting between them. Aziraphale’s gaze, his small, almost smug smile, are steady.

“How could you know?”

“I _did_ pay attention during the Enlightenment, you know. A spirit of experimentation. After you said… what you said, the other night, I gave it some thought. Obviously we’ve always both been able to do miracles. Bless, or tempt. Those don’t seem to be _contingent_ , if that’s the word. But I don’t belong to Heaven any more, nor you to Hell." He empties what remains in the Thermos, screws it shut. "I started to wonder if -- well, if I'd seen the last of Hell burning its way out of you. Rather vindictively, but as you said, it was always meant to hurt.”

The demon steps closer, instinct still nudging him to give the damp spot on the turf a wide berth.

“And I still had that comb full of your hair. I hadn’t had the heart to clear it up, you see. So… I seem to have lost that particular Heavenly virtue. It's entirely conceivable, in fact, that at this point we might both be immune to the genuine articles. Though I confess the spirit of experimentation didn't carry me quite that far.”

Crowley scans the horizon, as if it’s the world that’s been changed, not them. Instead of returning to the blanket, he steps toward the cliff edge, where signs the length of the South Downs Way warn hikers not to tread.

“Know why I used to come up here? Not for the dinosaur bones… here.” Crowley hands off the sunglasses; drops to his knees, looks down at the choppy fractals of Mupe Bay forty metres below.

“My dear, what are – ?”

Wings unfold through the snug yoke of the black jacket, as if it’s no more solid than a hologram. Their angle rises a metre higher than the demon’s head, the tailfeathers brush the turf.

They’re still black – glossy, rainbow-glazed black. Before the angel can finish speaking he drops and rolls into emptiness, diving towards the water, then banking in a silent glide before ascending with a powerful beat of pinions until he’s no larger than a hawk’s silhouette in the blazing blue. Aziraphale’s jumped to his feet, dropping the glass, and this time it does meet its fate on a small outcrop of limestone.

Being seen has clearly become a less urgent concern. Aziraphale watches the distant silhouette as it describes loops and plunges, unaware that his mouth’s open in a soundless O, until Crowley swoops into a long returning dive, skimming the tussocks between the cliff and the blanket as he snaps his wings into nothingness and his arms around the angel.

“Still got that,” he says, shivering and laughing at the same time.

“ _Good Lord_ , Crowley, someone could have seen you -- you know that’s a Ministry of Defence camp back there, what if they’d shot at you -- ”

“Dodged a whole bomb, think I can’t dodge a bullet?”

“You _absolute madman._ I love you.” He realizes it’s the first time either of them has actually said it.

“So it seems as if it’s just the one thing.”

“Well – I haven’t tried _smiting_ anyone.”

“Don’t just now.”

“And you’ve still got the eyes… I’m glad. I like them.”

Crowley’s embrace loosens. “D’ye s’pose we’ll get old like they do? I mean, doesn’t seem likely, but…”

“I think there’s only one way to find out,” says Aziraphale, searching out Crowley’s hand to lace their fingers. “I’d very much like it if we were to do that together.”

* * *

_Funny how love can break your heart so suddenly  
_ _Funny how love came tumbling down with Adam and Eve_  
_Funny how love is running wild and feeling free_  
_Funny how love is coming home in time for tea_

He senses that the demon’s still wrapping his mind around all of it, and isn’t surprised to find them taking the scenic route home – narrow roads, more sheep, unruly hedgerows. The Bentley’s decided it’s finally time to serenade them, and the brushes of hands, Crowley’s arm along the seat back pulling him closer, are becoming more lingering, more promising.

The shadows are already lengthening as they realize they’ve wandered off their route – there’s barely any signal, they’ve given up on Siri – and at first he isn’t sure why Crowley’s pulling to the side of the road, though one does hear about lovers going, well, _parking._ It’s a new world. Possibly one that calls for more experiments.

“Have a look, shall we?”

“At – why ever?” There’s a slightly weatherbeaten estate agent’s sign beside a pair of flagstone piers that bracket the entrance to a twisty drive, sloping down towards a cottage set well back from the road. A low wall of the same grey stone surrounds the property.

“It feels a bit like trespassing.”

“I’m still a demon. ‘Least, I feel like one. C’mon.”

The drive’s rocky and rutted, and the fading light’s no help. Something briary tugs at Aziraphale’s sleeve. “Whatever is this about?”

“Just a thought. If we’re going to get old together, you want to do it from opposite sides of Regent Street?”

“You mean – “ the briar finally disengages (a small miracle may be involved). Crowley’s toeing the edge of what’s been a garden plot as recently as last season, an oblong of dark earth in the middle of the sea of shaggy grass, laced here and there with wild carrot and purslane. He drops to his knees, digs fingers into the soft loam; it’s black and yielding as far down as he can reach, clinging to the webs between his fingers and under his nails. “Y’could do something with this,” he says, yanking up the nearest of the weeds and knocking clumped earth off its root as if he’s already setting things to rights. “Good sun, what d’ye think? Kitchen garden for a hungry angel?”

Aziraphale’s only half listening; he’s found his way around the corner of the house, trying to peer in at the windows, but it’s too dim. The paint’s flaking, but the woodwork he can see is sound.

“Call ‘em,” Crowley says as the angel picks his way back around the corner of the house, clambering to his feet and knocking the clinging loam off his hands, the damp from the ground showing on his trouser knees even in the fading light. He rakes his hair back, leaving a smear of earth above one eyebrow. “Just for a lark. See what they want for it.”

“I don’t keep one of those – “

“Oh, angel. Kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.” Crowley pulls out his razor-thin smartphone, peers toward the lane with his dark-adapted eyes to tap in the estate agent’s number, tosses it. “Ask ’em when they can get us inside. I want a butcher’s at those fruit trees in the back.”

He’s biting into an early apple when he emerges on the far side of the house; the air’s so still and heavy that the tart scent carries. “One of the partners was in the office late,” says Aziraphale. “She can meet us here in about a half hour.”

“You tell her to come ahead?”

Unthinkable not to. Right now, if it makes his demon happy, it’s worth talking to a whole platoon of Britain’s most obnoxiously aggressive estate agents. He nods, hands the phone back.

“Good,” says Crowley. “Gives us just enough time.”

Somehow he’s backed against the lichen-dusted stone wall, somehow those long-fingered hands – the nails were still black with rich dirt when Crowley took the phone – are in his hair, pulling him into a kiss that leaves him light-headed with shock. He tries to say _Crowley, what are you doing,_ but gives up after a couple of inarticulate noises because his mouth is full, the acid sweetness of apple still on Crowley’s tongue, and if that means he’s eating of the Tree of Knowledge and there’s no going back, well, he’s already been cast out from Paradise and he couldn’t be happier about it.

The jacket catches and scrapes against the rough edges of the stone wall, and he finds he doesn’t care. The thump of blood into his centre, the clench in his belly are like physical blows. After a moment’s paralysis from sheer astonishment he returns the kiss and, presently, the slow friction that begins to take over the embrace. He imagines the estate agent saying _Gentlemen, I’m sorry if I’m breaking in on an intimate moment._ He wonders vaguely what the laws are on public indecency.

Crowley works his hand between them, rubbing the heel of it against the hard ridge that’s hijacked every bit of Aziraphale’s better judgment. The angel gasps, pushes back; reaches down to fumble at the fastenings, finds his hand batted away.

“No, angel. I want to make you need it so badly that you come just like this.”

There’s probably already a smear of garden dirt on the front of the trousers. He finds he doesn’t care about that either. Crowley’s hand moves in a rhythmic, rough slide over him through the cloth, coaxing a primitive sound out of his throat.

“Go on,” Crowley breathes so close to the angel’s ear that his hair prickles up. “Not letting you go till you come. Only got so long.” And the snakelike tongue’s back in his mouth, moving lazy and deep; the hand slows to a hard steady pressure that he struggles to push against, then gives him half a dozen sharp strokes, slows again, raking nails over the wool, _I’m always going to know those marks are there._ He can sense the demon’s listening for his gasps, an echolocation that tells him where to bear down.

If Crowley’s actually in any hurry there’s no sign of it. Every time the angel whines into his mouth, begins to breathe jaggedly, he backs off, stops, teases with his knuckles. The edges of the stone wall are digging into the angel’s palms where he’s braced, trying to thrust back, and finally the strokes of Crowley’s hand are long and quick.

“You’re going to – ah – make a mess of these trousers,” manages Aziraphale.

“No, beautiful, _you_ are. Yes you are. Just. Like. _That,”_ because the garden’s suddenly full of angel song, Aziraphale barely recognizes his own voice in his ears, nothing in six thousand years has ever pulled a sound like that out of him, and it’s a damned good thing he’s pressed so tight against the wall because his knees are water and his hands can barely scrabble for purchase.

He opens his eyes after a moment to see headlamps angling in from the road through the thickening twilight. The barely visible, wicked grin that confronts him when he turns back tells him Crowley’s been watching for them, timed it to the second. “You bastard,” he manages weakly.

Crowley takes his hand, squeezes it against the front of his own jeans.

“Saving this,” he says. “So we can do something proper later. Miracle yourself decent, angel, we’ve got company.”

* * *

“She reminded me a bit of Beelzebub. The way she kept putting her glasses up on her head. That red power suit.”

“Did she? Didn’t notice.”

“The price seemed quite fair. I’d, ah, go in with you.”

“Care to rephrase that?”

A moment’s hesitation: the grin beneath the sunglasses is, well, fiendish in the faint lights from the dash as the engine purrs into life. “No.”

“They just want to unload it for a ruin. Few quiet miracles, won’t know the place.”

“What… ever came over you there? Not that I’m um, complaining.”

“Ah, imagining the look on your face if we almost got caught.”

“I _do_ think it’s time we were getting back.”

The Bentley helpfully chimes in:

_It ain't dangerous enough for me_  
_Get your head down baby, we're gonna ride tonight_  
_Your angel eyes are shining bright_  
_I wanna take your hand, lead you from this place_  
_Gonna leave it all behind..._

Crowley floors it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like, share, reblog, comment! Authors always yearn.
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @copperplatebeech


	5. Chapter 5

“This is vaguely obscene.”

“Hoped it would be.”

Aziraphale senses more than hears the demon’s answer, because just now Crowley’s an enormous snake wrapped around his leg under the covers, twining in a last bulky loop across his chest to flick behind his ear with a mischievous tongue. He quite likes that when Crowley does it in human shape (his foray into experimental science has familiarized him with the term _reproducible result_ ). He wonders idly if he’s depraved. The answer is probably yes.

Crowley transforms just before he feels he needs to reach a decision on the matter: a long weight suddenly denting the mattress behind him, a laughter that’s more felt than heard, a wiry leg snugged between his. Changing shape hasn’t altered what seems to be a demonic mission.

“Dear, the plasterer’s coming at ten. Those last few bits in the parlour.”

“Got time then.”

“Barely. On which head, it would be very poor form were we to receive tradespeople naked. We will get a reputation.”

“I’m working towards that.”

It’s been a long, tumultuous autumn. Buying property in the twenty-first century seems unnecessarily complicated to an angel who’s been miraculously perpetuating his lease for the last century and a half, but he’s determined for some reason to do it their way. It gives him an excuse to close the shop for their journeys back and forth between here and London, which is an added bonus.

The carpenters and glaziers haven’t noticed the odd miracle that makes bits of dry rot disappear or windows glide more smoothly in their frames. Crowley persists in finding ways to almost embarrass Aziraphale in front of them, along with customers, and waiters, and their new, nearest neighbours on the Downs; in fact, he seems to take a special delight in it.

The angel does, too.

Half dreading something even more stark and Scandinavian than the flat in Mayfair, he let Crowley have his way when he insisted on taking charge of the bedroom. But after a few hours’ banishment to the sketched-in library almost as soon as they’d arrived to meet a delivery, he was summoned back to the spectacle of a Chippendale dresser and four-poster, buried under a mountain of featherbeds.

The rest of the afternoon disappeared, somehow.

The demon’s still a bit prickly, still sometimes bitter about _your lot_ a few glasses in, still moody. Gets stroppy, slams out for a long ramble through the woods and fields; comes back subdued. Jumps now and then when even expected deliveries come down the winding drive, and has an anxious, reproachful expression if the angel turns up to meet him at a London furniture dealer’s or restaurant a few minutes late. There’s a difficult moment in Piccadilly involving a busker who looks entirely too much like Uriel, and he doesn’t want to let Aziraphale out of his sight for a day or two afterwards; the fire’s left his flesh, the rest’ll take time. They quarrel, and make it up, and quarrel and make up again; they’re good at it, they’ve been doing it for centuries.

Making up is sweeter than the angel’s ever imagined it could be.

It bothers him at first that when they spend the night here, Crowley sometimes slips out of bed when he thinks the angel’s sleeping. Aziraphale, who more often than not refrains from doing any such thing, because he’s muffled in featherbeds with his demon and it’s _their home_ and missing a moment of that is a game for fools, leaves him to it a second and third time, and a fourth. A Crowley who can’t sleep is a Crowley who needs to be left to himself, he’s learning that, not to wheedle, not to hover.

But one night he’s gone long enough that the angel worries, tiptoes out into the hall; feels a chill from the spare room with the French doors opening onto what’s less a balcony than an excuse for a safety railing. They’re ajar, creaking in a frigid breeze that’s come up, and when he looks out over the Downs, there’s a silhouette against the moonlit cloudwrack – great wings beating upward and folding together in steep dives, pulling up just short of the clumped treetops dotted around the quilted fields.

He stares, lost in time, able to think only _he’s mine,_ so that when the blown-flag airbursts of those spreading pinions fill his ears in a final deep plummet, he’s caught by surprise. Finds his gaze captured by eyes that are topaz without any white showing, the demon’s wings folding in as he perches like an owl on the railing, naked and shuddering with the cold.

“Angel, you should be in bed.”

“So should you. Now.”

He says it without reproach. He knows Crowley needs this: to test himself, to show he’s not broken.

“Will you take me with you sometime? If that’s all right.”

He’s pressed against Aziraphale’s warmth as if there’s nothing else in the world.

“I’d like that.”

* * *

The plasterer clears out by five. It’s gotten a little raw, and it doesn’t help that the house had to be open for a straggle of final deliveries. When Aziraphale comes into the parlour, which still smells faintly of spackle and cleaners, Crowley’s feeding a last few torn strips of cardboard packing-case into the grate.

He stops short in the doorway. There’s both hesitation and determination in the demon’s movements; he’s laid a structure of split wood from the lichen-sketched, years-old pile in the back, and he’s contemplating a stiltlike fireplace match. After a moment he strikes it, sets it to the kindling; there’s a little tremor in his hand, barely detectable, but he waits through a deliberate, steady, slow count of three every place it touches till the match burns down.

“Doesn’t hurt a bit,” he says. “Livin’ like mortals has its points.”

The furniture’s not arranged yet, but the jute rug in front of the firescreen’s thick, and Aziraphale settles beside him, setting his cocoa on the hearthstone. Crowley’s looking down at his long-fingered hands, opening and closing them, hands that are blessedly (if that’s the word) stripped of their flames.

“D’ye suppose it just happened naturally when we walked away and didn’t look back?” he says. “Or did Heaven and Hell cut us both off? Or did She? Still tryin' to get what happened there.”

“I believe it’s ineffable,” Aziraphale replies after some thought.

And perhaps it is time for us to retire for a while and leave them some privacy, an angel and a demon – though possibly no longer entirely either – sharing a fire that is not quenched, in the best imaginable sense.

“Come here, angel.”

_finis_


End file.
